Baseball players have many reasons to want to play as many games as possible in 2020. There's the financial aspect of it. Players with guaranteed major-league deals are guaranteed only 4% of their 2020 salaries and the rest is prorated based on the number of games played. That's a big one.
The aspect of competition is also important. These are hundreds of guys trained to be competitive every day for six months straight during the season, and for periods during the offseason when they're staying in shape. How do you replace those competitive juices? (Let's hope these guys are staying away from online poker.)
There is also the sense of normalcy that the return of baseball would bring. The regular season transports us through the spring and summer to the fall, both consciously and subconsciously. For the baseball fan, nothing can really fill that void.
The players feel the same way. And for some or most of them, the goal is to play enough games that a 2020 championship would carry the same weight as a title in any other year.
"The consensus of all the guys around the league is we want to play as many games as possible for many reasons," Phillies lefty reliever Adam Morgan told Gregg Murphy on Wednesday.
"One of them is to kinda make it normal and have the playoffs be the right number of games. Not try to modify too much to where whoever wins the World Series ... if we win the World Series we don't want to have an asterisk by it, like, 'Hey, you won 2020 but it was a weird season or weird situation so you didn't really win the World Series.'
"Everybody that I've talked to about it is OK with playing 20-something games in a row to make sure that we get as many games in as we can and have a backup plan for rainouts."
MLB
According to multiple national reports, optimism is building toward baseball potentially opening back up in June and beginning its season in July. The goal is still to play 100-plus games. That would indeed mean fewer off-days, more doubleheaders and an end date approaching the winter months.
"The majority of the teams and the guys, the momentum is going for playing as many games as we can, as deep into the year as we need to go," Morgan said. "And we'll deal with 2021 when we get there. We're eager to get back, ready to play, we're going stir crazy."
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